This butter rub is similar to the one I make for beef ribeye roast (or prime rib). Normally, I make the ribeye roast in my oven, but a couple of times my husband has used our huge smoker to smoke them and I just have to come up with the rub for them. This time, my husband wanted to try his hand at smoking a beef tenderloin.
This particular roast started out at around 5 1/2 pounds but required a lot of trimming, as they do when you purchase them untrimmed. There are so many helpful videos out there showing you how to remove the “chain” and trim one properly, so if you buy it untrimmed as we did I would suggest you look those up.
The key to its success is definitely using a thermometer. In fact, my husband used two of them (one probed into the side and one on the top) to cross-check each other since he didn’t want to ruin such an expensive cut of meat. When it was finished, he couldn’t believe how amazingly tender the meat was.
Smoked Beef Tenderloin with Roasted Garlic Butter Rub
Ingredients
Roasted Garlic Butter Rub
- 1/2 cup salted butter (softened)
- 1/3 cup roasted garlic
- 1/4 cup creamed horseradish
- 1 1/2 Tbsp. minced fresh rosemary
- 1 tsp. sea salt
- 1/2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
Beef Tenderloin
- 5 lbs. beef tenderloin (trimmed and "chain" removed)
- 2 tsp. sea salt (to taste)
- 2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper (to taste)
Instructions
Roasted Garlic Butter Rub
- Mash the roasted garlic and combine it with the butter, blending well by hand. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Let this sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes or so, stirring occasionally.
Beef Tenderloin
- Remove the tenderloin at least an hour before smoking it. Trim the tenderloin, if it hasn't been already, then you can cut off the tapered end and reserve it for something else, if you like, or you can fold it underneath later on. Add salt and pepper to the meat on all sides and any other seasonings you may like, then rub it down with a couple of tablespoons of the butter. Shape the tenderloin to make it more uniform by folding the tapered end under as you would with a pork tenderloin. Use kitchen twine to bind it together.
- Get the smoker going, setting it for 300F. Use the butter rub again to more thickly coat the bound up meat. You'll likely have some left over (the amount I have pictured in the container is a double batch). With the leftover, you can add a bit to melt over the cooked and cut pieces of tenderloin, or freeze it and use it as compound butter for future steaks. The amount you have left depends on how much you want to use for the tenderloin.
- Using a thermometer inserted into the thickest part, place the tenderloin directly on the grill. Smoke the meat anywhere from 1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on how many times you check on the meat (disrupting the smoker) and how big the trimmed tenderloin is. Bring the temperature to 120F for Medium-Rare and pull it. Loosely wrap the meat in foil and let it rest until it rises to 130F.
